British teens - especially girls - the unhappiest in Europe

[RedToothBrush]

The charity said its findings reveal a 'deeply worrying picture around wellbeing and happiness' among teenagers, adding: 'Alarm bells are ringing.'

A quarter of British 15-year-olds report having poor life satisfaction, the highest rate amongst 27 European countries polled and almost 20 percentage points higher than in Holland.
Among UK teenage girls, almost a third report low life satisfaction, compared to one in five across Europe, the charity found.

British girls aged ten to 15 are 'significantly less happy' with their life, appearance, family and their school than the average boy, with life satisfaction scores declining in girls but stable among boys.

The Children's Society said it is 'particularly troubling' that the gap between boys and girls is widening. Between 2015 and 2022 happiness levels among 15-year-old girls in the UK have also declined more sharply than the European average.
Data from the Good Childhood Report found that 22.6 per cent of girls reported being unhappy with their appearance in 2021/22, compared to 9.2 per cent of boys.

One teenager said their peers often feel they need to 'change' themselves to be accepted, because people won't 'acknowledge you or look at you' otherwise. They said people had to 'look a certain way to be accepted'.

The report said that the dissatisfaction relates to a range of factors including food deprivation, NHS waiting lists for mental health services, bullying in schools and levels of physical activity – with the UK having the fifth highest rate of pupils reporting no physical exercise.

It also found that the 'endemic' level of school absence in some age groups has a 'dramatic' effect on attainment and resulting life satisfaction.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13790299/British-teenagers-unhappy-Europe-quarter-15-year-olds-UK.html

Phones and Internet aren't unique to the UK but are an easy target to point the finger at.

I agree with this.

Having family in the EU my impression is that the high school experience in the UK is fucking miserable compared to other countries (maybe not south Korea..). You get 11 year olds being bellowed at in school for pointless stuff such as the material of your shoes. Being a teenager should be about discovering the world and the endless possibilities of life, finding the things you love instead of getting ready for a life of ugly grind, symbolised by those bloody polyester blazers.

Also the UK has been declining for over a decade. Kids can see this. Things don't work, people are at each other's throats. Any teen that has a health problem or knows anyone who does can see what a horror the nhs is and will live in fear of getting ill. The message is work hard, conform, get a load of student debt and you will be rewarded with a shit life. Whereas a handful of people - by virtue of privileged birth, good looks, football talent or online charisma - live an unattainable lifestyle. It shouldn't be like that - happiness, fun and fulfillment should be within reach for everyone.

The UK also has the highest number of girls age 15 who have had sex in Europe. So do culturally have pressures that other kids don't, and I find it hard not to link that with the internet.

I agree with this. I think there is a rush to grow up.

Google OECD PISA? It's a massive international dataset. There are issues with using the academic testing part to rank the quality of education in different countries, but it's definitely not asking 23 people off the street!

That's interesting Red. But is it a new problem? I remember there used to be a lot of teenage pregnancies 20-25 years ago. It's not the same issue but it suggests that (comparatively) early sexual activity in the UK is not a new thing. I've not been able to find clear statistics for sexual activity in teens by country.

I’m just back from mainland Europe and I have a crazy theory for you. The main reason why teenagers lives are so much smaller in the U.K. is buses. Until this summer, my 11 and 14 year old could go wherever they wanted. There was a bus from our rural small town to the bigger town, and a network of buses linked to an app - one (state-linked) provider with an intelligent timetable, not a mishmash of providers who all do two buses a day. Now we’re back there’s nowhere for them to go unless I drive them. So they’re mostly at home or someone else’s house, and in both cases parents are working so they end up on screens unsupervised. And even though we’ve nailed down their settings and they are not on social media, it’s just such a small life with no agency. At their age I was getting the bus to town to mooch around the shops. Not an option at all in our area.

Having lived in several European countries, I'd put the difference down to

• Stressed parents with long commutes, who are always in a rush
• Poor quality food, leading to worries about weight & body image.
• UK culture that discourages girls from taking part in sport.
• Lack of family time
• Transient communities

I’d be surprised if this was really weighing heavily on most 10-15yr old minds. The average results in MFL GCSE’s suggest that the language barrier might be a bigger issue than Brexit for most teens.

My niece felt like your dd when the uk voted to leave, but she is now in her early 20’s and living and working in France so all is not lost!

Things I've noticed (lived in a few countries):

Uniforms mean that clothes outside school become really important. May account for some of the appearance issues.
School in my part of the UK is rough. Police outside, issues on public transport. Are there areas in Europe with police outside schools regularly? I haven't seen it.
UK girls seem highly sexualised from an early age. When you go to other countries you don't see the fake nails, tans, eyelashes, heavy make-up and revealing clothes. Even on here, sex before 16 is seen and spoken about like it's unavoidable and fine. These are children.
Alcohol. It's a depressant and more common here in parents and children.
Drugs. Cannabis is widespread. I'm always interested in places where it's legalised and the young people seen to use it less than in the UK, where it's not.
Poor mental health services. The sheer number of anxious, depressed, avoidant, ND children I know. No decent services, even with pushy parents. Which means the children are hard to manage and therefore get more gaming and social media than they should. Vicious cycle.

That's some of the stuff I think hurts children, especially girls.

Oh and non-sexual, healthy touch. Hugs, kissing, holding hands with friends and adults is normative in mainland Europe. Sitting on laps of friends, holding hands. There's not as much of that. Healthy, non-sexual human touch is really important.

I remember reading something similar back in the ‘90s, that UK children were some of the unhappiest in Europe, so it’s really concerning that things don’t seem to have improved.

I’d never be able to find the report (it would have been in The Guardian), but I remember reading similar concerns around appearance in it. I’m not trying to shift blame from social media and internet usage , it just seems whatever was going wrong had been made worse as we’ve developed new tech and our lifestyles have changed.

I think the Anglocentric nature of the internet means that if English isn’t your first language, you are protected from some of the internet batshittery.

Agree re: lack of transport/buses and general shitness. Our local comp and some facilities are properly shit, and exposure to everything else via the internet means there’s no hiding how much better it could be. And not in the Insta influencer way, more in the private schools/posh house/fancy holiday way where there are people similar to you who just have it much better.

😂😂

Hmm. I wonder if there's something to do with peer attachment vs parental/extended family attachment. Gordon Neufeld is a huge proponent of building strong attachment with children and teens, and has examined some European cultures who have this extended family attachment culture, and childhood and teenage health and happiness are a very different picture compared to places where this is less strong.

Families are increasingly atomised in this country, I feel. Including my own - I don't have an extended network of grandparents, adult siblings, cousins, aunties and uncles to lean on and support my efforts in bringing up my DC. They don't even have their father in the picture anymore, he's just walked away from them. It's a very bleak and isolating picture compared to other families with strong relationships across the generations.

Unpaid adults who care about them are incredibly important to children.

It wouldn't surprise me.

It's just so easy to blame phones and Internet because they are easy to remove and point the blame at parents.

The deeper issues, the exam culture, the
inclusion in schools that works for few but fails many, the sexulisation of girls, even with uniforms - some blazers are longer than the skirts.
The diet, the weather it's easy to be healthy when it's hot and you don't feel like eating a roll n sausage, prospects leaving school, jobs, seeing people a few years older struggling to get a toe on the career ladder even with qualifications. The millions of women work that's low paid carers, even with qualifications, shop work.

None of them are easy fixes so just blame the Internet.

This is so so sad. I do think our teens compared to other countries are more exposed to shows like Love Island and similar which have triggered the filler look on another level. Plus there's the access to porn at terrifyingly young ages warping children's minds.

I think we also have to consider the state of mental health support which has been demolished since, what? The 80s? So children’s services are overwhelmed and understaffed/funded PLUS children are living with adults who aren’t able to get the right support.

i mean, schools make a lot of noise about wellbeing but the reality is it’s difficult to fit that in without something else being deprioritised- and schools may want their kids to thrive but they also have to get the results OFSTED want so it drops down the list. (I’m not blaming schools, we’re stuck in an impossible situation)

I think the suggestion I saw with those stats is the pressure to have sex is getting worse (but I believe there are fewer teen pregnancies as a rule).

I do think it's fashion related.

Fashion in the UK is sexualised in a way it's not in Europe and it's more faddy and changes faster. The pressure to wear the right brand is higher.

If you read some of the comments about 'fitting in' I think it's also telling.

There's social peer pressure which is hyper focused on 'getting it right' and certain types of conformity.

This is advertising led and in turn social media led.

If you look at marketing throughout Europe the way things are sold to kids and young people isn't as pressured and as heavily targeted in the same way.

It's much more commercial in the UK (following the trend in the US). That's linked to higher levels of disposable income which is also related to greater levels of inequality.

If you look at a lot of other European countries they have traditionally had greater socialist influence and there's less of a gap between rich and poor. So there's generally less disposable income and so it's almost less competitive to show off your status.

Add class issues in the UK to the mix and you've probably got close to a perfect storm once you add in shocking access to mental health support.

I cannot fathom mums watching Love Island and similar with their girls. I literally cannot understand the idea of it.

Agreed.
Why are our girls allowed to become like mini adults so young?

20 points higher than Holland ... Dutch teens have a lot of freedom most British ones don't have: infrastructure for cycling makes them less dependent on their parents' cars, and there's real effort in making the public realm a pleasant place to be in. (These are good things for other people too, of course, though suggest better cycling infrastructure in this country and everybody goes crazy.)

That said they also seem to be particularly obnoxious which I suspect may be due to very permissive parenting. Teens will be happy if you let them do what they want; but letting them do what they want isn't always the best thing for society.

I think team sports for teens/young women are fantastically important. I coach at my local rowing club where we have a pretty strong juniors section and it is lovely to see the camaraderie, friendships, fitness and dare I say positive mental wellbeing of the teens involved. They are a diverse bunch from very different backgrounds and schools but have found a common cause (success on the water) and they are working hard towards that. They all seem confident about how they carry themselves, they are fit, wear little make up and don't really care how they look when they have come off the water covered in sweat and mud/goose shit. While they all have smart phones they are packed away during training and for a few hours at least they can be focused on something other then tiktok etc.

I think societies in many other countries value their children and teenagers more than we do. My experience of living in other countries is that there is much more positive interaction and respect between the generations than in the UK. I am amazed at how much people here underestimate teenagers. They think they can’t be responsible or independent, treat them like incompetent children and then wonder why they aren’t behaving like adults. Another thing I have noticed when taking teenagers on school trips is that a large number of adults are incredibly rude and grumpy to them even when the teenagers are being perfectly behaved. One example was when I had to ask a professional, middle aged woman to stop sharply elbowing my lovely Yr10’s and to say excuse me instead. I bet she never elbowed adults out of her way.

The thing is, as much as I have a lot to say about the negative sides of social media, there’s always something. Maybe it was women’s magazines, our parents or just the media in the 90s, but I remember as young as 9 starting to suck in my stomach and being extremely concerned with my weight. Whatever it is, there’s always something to replace it to make us not feel good enough.